BSO bring the music of Ukraine

It is an unusual day for a BSO concert at Portsmouth Guildhall, and the programme begins with a rare example of music from Ukraine.

The orchestra’s 2016-17 season begins on Wednesday with the overture to Taras Bulba, the work regarded both as composer Mykola Lysenko’s masterpiece and as the supreme Ukrainian opera.

It will be introduced by the BSO’s Ukrainian chief conductor, Kirill Karabits, at the start of a programme that also features Tchaikovsky’s popular first piano concerto, with South Korean Sunwook Kim as soloist, and music by William Walton.

His first symphony, emerging from malice and melancholy, is now established as a landmark in English symphonic music to rank alongside Elgar’s masterpieces.